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As we headed for Los Angeles, Nixon decided that we should see where he had lived for two years, recovering his bearings after losing the 1960 presidential election. It soon emerged that Nixon had no precise idea of the location of that residence. He remembered it was in a big development in a canyon near the Beverly Hills Hotel. For well over an hour, we explored every canyon and the streets leading off them. Try as we might, we could not find the house. And soon the relaxed, almost affable, Nixon gave way to the agitated, nervous Nixon with whom I was familiar. He was at ease with his youth; he could recount his struggles; he could not find the locus of his achievements.
Nixon had set out to make himself over completely; to create a new personality as if alone among all of mankind he could overcome his destiny. But the gods exacted a fearful price for this presumption. Nixon paid, first, the price of congenital insecurity. And ultimately he learned what the Greeks had known: that the worst punishment can be having one's wishes fulfilled too completely. Nixon had three goals: to win by the biggest landslide in history; to be remembered as a peacemaker; and to be accepted by the "Establishment" as an equal.
He achieved all these objectives at the beginning of 1973. And he lost them all two months later, partly because he had turned a dream into an obsession. On his way to success he had traveled on many roads, but he had found no place to stand, no haven, no solace, no inner peace. He never learned where his home was. -